Tubes Filled With Expansive Concrete. Application To The Viaduct Over The Erques Ravine. Experimental Programme And In-Situ Instrumentation

The viaduct over the Erques ravine (Tenerife) is a through arch bridge formed by two arcs with 110 m span and 15 m of rise at the mid span. Each arch is composed of two steel tubes, of 1020 mm diameter, filled with expansive concrete. This paper describes the previous experimental program that served as the basis for the execution of the arches of the viaduct. The instrumentation carried out to record the longitudinal and circumferential strains and temperatures outside the tubes during the casting process and subsequent hardening is also detailed, in order to estimate the expansive effect of the concrete and check if the results are according to those determined in the previous research.The characterization of expansive concrete for its application in tubular structures requires performing free and confined concrete expansion tests, in order to adjust the required expansion strain. These tests were complemented with others used to determine the slip load of the concrete core inside the steel tube at room temperature and with uniform and differential heating, carried out to evaluate the incidence of thermal effects on the resistance capacity to interfacial shear stress forces of the interface tube-concrete.